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Nieco Flare Ups
Nieco JF64 Flare Ups, good morning, working an event yesterday had 1 out of 8 Nieco JF64 2G broilers experiencing excessive flare ups causing unit to spike to over 800 degrees due to flares and grease fires, this is 1 of 8 of the same models at this particular location. I completely dis-assembled and re-assembled unit, it was correct to begin with but I wanted to make certain everything was in the right place. Setting are the same on all units, product is same on all units. I dont service a ton of these units so I am leaning towards the modulating gas valve as faulty, and not properly modulating flame to control overtemps during flare ups. Unit never overtemps when running with no product, it is only when running burgers through, the one high fat item, option belt never flares with chicken or steaks, just the main belt which is used for burgers. Main line gas pressure is spot on. Any thoughts?
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8 Replies
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Hopefully these are muti product broilers with the quick selection pad for product change. If not, the operator on that oven forgot to change the belt speed for burgers. Second, Clean the catalyst and the sizzle plate. They are obviously using a 30 to 35 % fat meat. Third, Make sure your hood is functioning properly. It will cause it to flare. It’s not your gas valve. The heat is from the flare up. High temp and slow belt. Check the calibration of the load sensing control. Has to be done cold in the morning and takes about 30 min. It’s in these manuals.
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Thanks for the info, appreciate it. This is a multi product model with the narrow option flex belt, the reason it was bugging me so much, this unit is one of 8 on site, all set exactly he same, speed, temp, etc… Unfortunately it was in the middle of the Pats Dolphins game and trying to service during event can be challenging to say the least. I plan on doing a full calibration and checking and setting lo and high gas pressures. Inlet after reg is suppose to be 5.0″ high & 2.0 low. The reason I was looking at modulating valve was due to previous damage from a gas leak, factory replaced blue cover only which had melted, I was surprised at time they didnt just swap out entire valve. Ill let you know what I find this week. Have a few week break between home games.
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Check to see if the wiring and signal from the load sensing control and valve is doing what it’s supposed to do. I to am surprised that a gas valve suffered damage and was not replaced, but repaired. Big no-no.
Make sure to check the program for burger to see if it is the same as the others. They may have forgotten to push the right program.
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One additional thing you might want to check is whether the unit is level.
In our burger venue, we HAD two JF-63s having flare-up issues. We found that the unit was listing forward slightly, which slowed the grease drainage. Nieco had me install shims under the front mounts so grease would be more inclined to run off the grease pan, to the grease chute and then the grease box.
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Yep, I thought of that also, but all of this occured right at start of football game, so there was only so much I could do at he time. I will be doing a complete set up on unit this week. Going to act like its day one install and go through unit. I am assuming this unit wants to pitch slightly toward grease catch which is located at right rear, This unit is setup with main belt closest to front and flex belt is rear. The main belt is their “burger belt” and this was the one with the flare issues.
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Not to say that was the cure-all. We still had constant problems with those units.
When conferring with Nieco, I had BOTH of those units under a microscope. I can’t remember how many times I’d followed their instructions to the letter to adjusted that modulating valve (for the unit cooking actual hamburgers) and was told to advise them that they use a different set point accordingly. Then the question of fat content of the burgers came to question and was told to advise them to purchase a different product with different fat content.
I even had the FOUNDER of the company here for a face-to-face in addressing the issues. I WILL admit that they DID say that the units were too small for the work load our Chefs demanded from them.
Those broilers were extremely high maintenance and required constant repairs.
That venue has since gone back to using griddles (with NO t-stats! HA!) I’m glad those Niecos are gone now.
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Oh no, you just sucked the last glimmer of hope away from me, hahaha. These units are pretty much brand spanky new, JF64-2GBG, and the burger product is an all organic, grass fed beef product, and they are big burgers. But this is the only unit out of the 8 units which have this issue, and are all set exactly alike. There are definitely floor level issues in this stand, and again, this is the unit which the “volunteer high school kids” left the lower burner partially pulled out a few weeks ago and the gas, (not surprisingly) ignited inside the control compartment and melted the modulating valve and fried the ignition cable, the factory simply replaced the blue plastic cover on the valve, which I was kind of surprised at considering what this customer just dropped on 8 of these units.
My other stadium customer tried the Taylor electronic gas clamshell griddle during last baseball season, they couldnt tear that unit out fast enough. Sometimes I wonder if these manufacturers dont quite grasp the intelligence level of the average food service worker today? They are not NASA engineers, they are kids. The other unit was an Evo down drafted electric griddle, I will have to find the pictures of this beauty someday and post them, apparently they didn’t know they had to regularly clean the electrostatic filter cartridges, the 50 plus pound ones marked with high voltage you will die if you touch these warnings.
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So here is an interesting thought on this one particular unit, as you seem to have some really good insight. If unit was fairly significantly un level, and the front was higher than the back, the back being where the gas enters the “U” shaped bottom burner, do you think it is possible for that to cause the flame to migrate to the front of the broiler causing the excessive flare-ups on the main belt which happens to be the belt the burgers are cooked on? Kind of a flu effect, so the heat is rising and concentrating on the front. The installer put extra shims on the front of unit because the client said the grease was not properly channeling towards the collection pan. I am going out to site later this week to level and check all gas pressures, but have thoughts rattling around inside my head on this one. Thanks in advance.
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